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The Devil You Dance With
South African film culture, like so much of its public life, has undergone a tremendous transformation during its first decade of democracy. Filmmakers, once in exile, banned, or severely restricted, have returned home; subjects once outlawed by the apparatchiks of apartheid are now fair game; and a new crop of insurgent filmmakers are coming to the fore. This extraordinary volume presents twenty-five in-depth interviews with established and emerging South African filmmakers, collected and edited by Audrey Thomas McCluskey. The interviews capture the filmmakers’ spirit, energy, and ambition as they attempt to give birth to a film culture that reflects the heart and aspirations of their diverse and emergent nation. The collection includes a biographical profile of each filmmaker, as well an introductory essay by McCluskey, pointing to the themes, as well as creative differences and similarities, among the filmmakers.
Cinema in a Democratic South Africa
Lucia Saks uses South African cinema as a lens through which to view cultural changes resulting from the end of apartheid in 1994. She examines how media transformed the meaning of race and nation during this period and argues that, as apartheid was disbanded and new racial constructs allowed, South Africa quickly sought a new mode of representation as a way to distance itself from the violence and racism of the half-century prior, as well as to demonstrate stability amid social disruption. This rapid search for a new way to identify and portray itself is what Saks refers to as the race for representation. She contextualizes this race in terms of South African history, the media, apartheid, sexuality, the economy, community, early South African cinema, and finally speculates about the future of "counter-cinema" in present-day South Africa.
African Film and Literature
Analyzing a range of South African and West African films inspired by African and non-African literature, Lindiwe Dovey identifies a specific trend in contemporary African filmmaking-one in which filmmakers are using the embodied audiovisual medium of film to offer a critique of physical and psychological violence. Against a detailed history of the medium's savage introduction and exploitation by colonial powers in two very different African contexts, Dovey examines the complex ways in which African filmmakers are preserving, mediating, and critiquing their own cultures while seeking a united vision of the future. More than merely representing socio-cultural realities in Africa, these films engage with issues of colonialism and postcolonialism, "updating" both the history and the literature they adapt to address contemporary audiences in Africa and elsewhere. Through this deliberate and radical re-historicization of texts and realities, Dovey argues that African filmmakers have developed a method of filmmaking that is altogether distinct from European and American forms of adaptation.
Steps by Steps
"The Steps for the Future documentary film project began in 2000, as a shared journey by talented African filmmakers and well-known professionals from around the world. The experience of the North combined with the knowledge of the South was an auspicious fusion that helped create 38 unique films. It was also the catalyst for new documentary projects such as Why Democracy? All the films produced dealt with the question of death and the enormous problem of HIV and AIDS in Southern Africa. Films that millions of people have seen worldwide, that have received awards from Cannes to Zanzibar, and \2013 dubbed into local languages \2013 are still used throughout southern Africa. Steps by Steps provides an honest and thorough picture of the process, step by step. Detailed accounts of the logistics of making the series are mingled with reflections on the art of direction, working with other people and the reality of the lives of those people affected by HIV and AIDS. Steps by Steps gives a rare behind-the-scenes look at the making of documentary films and the building of a worldwide project, complete with its problems and triumphs, mistakes and unique results"--Publisher's website.
Focus on African Films
'Focus on African Films' offers pluralistic perspectives on filmmaking across Africa, highlighting the distinct thematic, stylistic, and socioeconomic circumstances of African film production.
Frame by Frame III
An invaluable compendium for anyone interested in cinema
Ruins of Modernity
Images of ruins may represent the raw realities created by bombs, natural disasters, or factory closings, but the way we see and understand ruins is not raw or unmediated. Rather, looking at ruins, writing about them, and representing them are acts framed by a long tradition. This unique interdisciplinary collection traces discourses about and representations of ruins from a richly contextualized perspective. In the introduction, Julia Hell and Andreas Schönle discuss how European modernity emerged partly through a confrontation with the ruins of the premodern past. Several contributors discuss ideas about ruins developed by philosophers such as Immanuel Kant, Georg Simmel, and Walter Benja...
Imagining the Edgy City
Drawing on over fifty years of writing, performance, film, architecture, photography, and culture more broadly, Imagining the Edgy City offers a compelling interdisciplinary study of South Africa's largest city.
Directory of World Cinema: Africa
Eschewing the postcolonial hubris that suggests Africa could only define itself in relation to its colonizers, a problem plaguing many studies published in the West on African cinema, this entry in the Directory of World Cinema series instead looks at African film as representing Africa for its own sake, values, and artistic choices. With a film industry divided by linguistic heritage, African directors do not have the luxury of producing comedies, thrillers, horror films, or even love stories, except perhaps as DVDs that do not travel far outside their country of production. Instead, African directors tend to cover serious sociopolitical ground, even under the cover of comedy, in the hopes of finding funds outside Africa. Contributors to this volume draw on filmic representations of the continent to consider the economic role of women, rural exodus, economic migration, refugees and diasporas, culture, religion and magic as well as representations of children, music, languages and symbols. A survey of national cinemas in one volume, Directory of World Cinema: Africa is a necessary addition to the bookshelf of any cinephile and world traveller.
